this morning we have first of all about next time i'm not sure about next time because this thing and as for wins thing is going on next week and i'm involved with it i don't know it's happening they're having their panels and right in the morning at this time so i don't know how that's going to work we might have to ski
if the class next week was born into a week after or we might have to do it earlier in the morning and on an average so i'll just after to your normal ship but in any case for next time please read section five of murders and our experience
that's the one on
pure contemplation on mystery books the contemplation which we've already talked about as a duo ready for what he's doing in these two section section for in section five is to divide contemplative experience into to great categories and that in section four he treats the first category which is
well it active contemplation and in section five you teach the other one which is strictly mystical content bush and of you're contemplates computer unit of experienced or mystical theology or theology there are a dozen names work
and so today we're going to be talking about section four of which is
active contemplation as he took that it isn't quite clear from the titles here but that this is about different kinds of contemplation according to the title but really first of all it's about the division and at age two kinds and then it's about the first guy so
but before we get into this as wanna say something about the article or gabriel winter which they gave you as an incomplete xerox or worse time it's incomplete because i didn't want you to it's a very complex and heavy article a long article now i didn't want you to get bogged down
and the first part because what we're interested in greeley the second part what i was trying to point out so let me go back to that because we only touched on and to agree for the last time i just point out a few things but you've got it can you find that gabrielle meckler article the origins and idiosyncrasies at the earliest form of asceticism
at a kind of a breakthrough of article again pointing out what's peculiar about syriac
spirituality now she's not the first want to do it but she's one of the first ones to do it in the states because the people who are and writing about this before and an england as far as i on the english language january that's a murray and brock's vest and brock and is robert murray
who are the two great translators and exponents of the syriac tradition and english and it's a marvelous tradition there's nothing quite like it sooner or later i think every monastic first when she became acquainted with that tradition because it's before monasticism good for law surprised none of us before the greek structure
years and dualisms got into a i said monasticism i mean christianity ago before those greek philosophical things got into christianity and split it up so you don't have a dualism of body and soul and the same way to go out of later on you don't have this extreme verticality and which of good is a tl
eg which is poetry and even music now them as they wrote a lot of their theology is hymns this is still true and and from and it's in the language which is the direct descendant of the new testament language aramaic sincerely x area because the child of aramaic so they've still got that stint same blood that same fluids going in them
the same culture basically
and so it's almost completely vatican
which may seem
in some way narrowed to it's got a certain as about it but at the same time it's got a terrific depths and fullness so if it's something that we have to be acquainted with
preceding the greco roman
container
the preceding our whole western cultural thing you know
and it's especially important for monasticism because it's got this thing of disunited a thing at its core which is consumer of baptism but let's take a look at her article you've got the first couple pages pages kind to eleven and then you've got the hang of it now and the beginning she tells you what she's setting
to do which is quite impressive actually
the first part of the radical asceticism as a be stolen like notice she's talking about luke's gospel a radically aesthetic slant of luke's gospel now scott sinclair was talking to about monasticism luke and and as doesn't in quotation marks but he was able to find it in luke and acts particularly because it has this
because slack
and she's talking about the syriac asceticism as being especially in the line of look because both and later she'll say john too
and as distinguished from fog
sura syriac asceticism and number three there was a mark biblical orientation is very different from its western town for
and it's connected with adult baptism okay now that's what went out
now she pointed out several ways of approaching that she says in this article the pneumatic characters are country and citizen and will be stressed that is the relation to the spirits are extreme and then she talks about which is going to do in the second part of the heroic of asceticism as life and spirit of christ and that's what we're concerned with because it
revision as word a hideous or academia which means one now we talked to my talking about the new testament gonna place from new testament about the spreading sort of words i've got a better word sure when i'll turn up but words tend to get what which is a squashed and a certain sense then that their meaning spreads out so that covers as
thing certain words and the tradition do that and the word one in syria because especially suited to that kind of
quantum explosion or something so what it does it get it gets opens itself up and spreads itself that's so includes just about everything and includes the core of christianity in a unity of way which is hardly found at all outside of the syriac tradition that's an extreme statement that
it's pretty hard to find anything that contains what would you got the unity of core of christianity the way this syriac tradition does and that's an express particularly and this word india or acadia so i recommended to your attention
let's go now to pages and twenty seven
in that same xerox
she's got a lot of unimportant stuff in that paragraph on the bottom of twenty seven
first of all the connection of asceticism and baptism and people got baptized in this tradition they had some kind of the culture somehow lent them to feel that they had to take up some kind of a circle life so some people felt that baptism sort of committed you to a life of celibacy if you can imagine that
now there is baptism almost pushed you in the direction and pushed you into our monastery to put it on a cruise it
and the original form of the original shape of baptism was what she goes a birth ritual or genesis mysticism that sounds very john and because very deep into the mystical meaning of the new testament if you want to find the mystical meaning of the new testament read it in terms
the of birth and of creation
birth and the garden of eden with alimony
and the first day of creation and creation of blight as the original form of baptism is predominantly oriented to a new mentality one of those unfortunate long words which simply means the physiology of the spirit
and the story of creation for the first for centuries of nothing and having nothing in common with the crystal centric desk mysticism paul's letter to the romans now here a red light clothes on her on alarm bell sounds because it knows she's pointing something out of which is important that the guest thing
and the across as sometimes than what we say accented in christianity to the extent that this positivity gets drowned out was shattered buried and that's what matthew fox has trying to get out from under with his creations that spirituality theology okay it's a thrust away from the oh
over accented shadow of the cross which is like a total eclipse
so that a life-size creation side and this unity and mystical side to christianity tends to get buried under the under the shadow of the cross so they're trying to
the trying to get this out and sometimes they do it by pushing away the other side of time that pushing the gross right out of sight see matthew foxes of danger of doing rejecting of all other side of christianity writing off st augustine even right our st paul and zone so she's in a lot of danger of doing at you and i
suspected also there's something a feminist issue on the news this is that the life mysticism of luke and john would be connected me with the feminine and the line with the magic with got something suspicious
so it's just a kind of warning as we proceed their discernment to be made and meeting when she has to stay
the she's gonna bring in a pause
galatians later on it's one of reply new testament to texas from collation so she's not rejecting pong tournament their baptismal theology was based on jesus on nomadic person river and to his baptism and the jonah of nomadic theology of being born of water in the spirit
according to the syrian of jesus emerged from the jordan has the spirit filled new atom who bestows new life to the mortally wounded items were likely getting experience and that's absolutely precious but if you've only got that and if you leave out the end of jesus line and to cross the death and resurrection what have you got you haven't got christianity
okay so this extremely important but and completed to center so we have to be a little bit on our guard there's a polarization and her point of view

this business about adam is extremely important because adam and remember where do you find that adam christ relationships from college and cause rather than amateur that's where we get it right and we get it there of course in terms also original sin and mental health access which she's somewhat pushing inside
but i want to focus on as this term a hideous are you kidding it
she begins to talk about the word on page twenty eight at the bottom
and notice how the word is elastic ever seems to expand
and the past to he was incorrectly translated of monk burma and solitary well it's incorrect and so far as it's a partial translation but sometimes a proud of it doesn't mean that but it doesn't mean only that
on the recently of scholars become more cautious by rendering area as single one now this thing begins to really light up at that point you see what's happening in the jesus is the one word of god is that one son of god is the one fullness of god expressed in a single human being who then
i'm somehow through baptism becomes identified that yourself and other words you become that and then that predicates all these other things and then for some people are predicated being a single one in terms of celibacy it's okay
and being single minded having single goal that all deal which is the core of monasticism she
is connected with baptism hadn't connected directly with a theological center of the new testament that jesus as the one the one who contains the unity of fullness of got the province of life this whole thing in the connection is completely visible there you see when it comes right flows right into the monastic but it's the
and practically the deepest basis for the monastic like to think that you can find and in a contemplative why not simply in the line of renunciation because you can also come from the other angle with monasticism as the anticipation of death and the acceptance of the cross in order to experience the resurrection after to enter into the life
with derision no different points of view you can take
so it's that word which is the center of what i'm trying to get across here which he has to offer you
and then she's got a bunch of codes from africa from f from and from the gospel of the active thomas
and later on the gospel of salvation
and there's a kind of a crescendo years until she winds up on pages thirty three
thirty seven
and you'll see that's what what's happening here because the in baptism
the original unity of humanity is being re-established and it happens on one side through the abolition of the distinctions between male and female between greek and gentile a jew and gentile and between slave and branch on although it
all of the different categories of humanity become would you say absorbed relative eyes eclipsed in this unity which is given in the new adam and christ through baptism and on the other stuff that's the social perspective which isn't galatians regulations three years two thousand and two
twenty seven twenty seven twenty eight because there's no longer we could do remember male and female slave or free for all one in christ jesus that's enormously important
text because not only does a christian unity but express that three basic columns of division
the sexual and gender is name the vertical same strategy society or economics lane three rich course and then the racial thing can the estimate thing or the the jew gentile thing another okay
if you look at those behind and hard to find another one to probably want to express the cracks along which the whole of humanity has split and which reconcile put back together users
and basically and baptism
so this unity of adam and is being restored in you're entering into the one the only one they only child of god who is jesus in your baptism and remember the words that were spoken at the baptism of jesus you are my only begotten son and my mind
beloved sunlight which is taken as my only son i forget the exact words and the greek so it's all centered in baptism now she's sidestepping the issue of cross and resurrection but for early christians to save baptism was to say cross and resurrection and mean have it's just taken for granted i haven't studied this
and the syriac tradition to verify it into print it out i'm sure that's there so it would be wrong to separate us from to separated from the best history because then you end up with the handful of nothing
and then the word a hideous is the origin
so it is believed of the word monocots from the word monk okay which means one which means one which means solitary or something like that petition you see how that deepens and province as you take it back into this baptismal context
and the syriac tradition with its peculiar vocabulary
that word
her carter hart is connected with the hebrew of course a cat which means want somebody pointed out it's also connected to the sanskrit word that gets a come
which has a similar meaning
connected i mean it's in connected through the geared and possibly also somehow a historically
any questions about typically go on i've been unfair to and jumping would i just urge you to read it with some attention because it's worth it and if anybody wants the old paper the book as over there to copies of in libraries and my ones on the shelf and so then screwed lyric book your
to make a copy of the whole
i ran from there one goes that to marry and to brag and to their translations from the syriac a lot of which have appeared in that southernmost and the other journal eastern churches quarterly which was merged with sober note some years ago the two years to be independent not just one
then there are books by marianne brought to
and especially a fairly recent one by brad called the luminous high which is about to effort
miss robin mary j yes yeah i forget whether it's cambridge aware of the joke i don't know whether he's cambridge or oxford he's over new i think he is teaching
he's not counting are legit okay
okay now to get back to our main line
he remembered to review a little bit we were looking at the contemplative unity of experience in early christianity that isn't a new testament first of all with relationship to the word that is a new testament writings and then with relationship to baptism
and we can
scoop of your principles out of that
by now they shall be familiar to principal one at the core of the word is this not do a reality the imitate as i got the holy spirit or sophia the divine self communication who are god whatever you want to say which is communicated to us as contained within the shell of the word even within the show up
a new testament
secondly baptism is the initiatory experience with this unit of bonus the basic non dual experience from christianity and therefore the basic contemplative experience
and then thirdly the movement from baptism eucharist which is the other end the other terminus the final point of this unity journey and we talked about the red shift between that vision and nutrition is a gradual transformation of live in this unity of reality which we have got the redshift
from birth to death from gift forgiving from baptismal to eucharistic
which has multiple expressions and the new testament you move from the illumination to another kind of negative experienced in which you are transformed and your transform actually by dying remember where paul says as often as you eat this bread and make this cup you proclaim the desert the lord until it comes
the eucharist christmas food with his desk at the same time after a mysterious thing
visit baptism into the same time as and like
okay now we want to
read this section for of martin and then make a few additions true
kinds and stages of contemplation that's what it's about and he's simplify to thing a great deal if you look around and the literature and christian literature christian tradition you can find ladders and ladders and scales and scales and all kinds of structures and of different stages there's a kind of mania you go through for stages and live
it's on schemes and a certain point where you want to know where you are you're on a map of the journey concern to have been hundreds of and i love and there's a lot of three fold schemes and there have been seven folds games and twelve poets games and ten volts games
and so on
martin has simplified it and he just talks about two kinds of contemplation and he's very wise and doing now
but now he's he makes the division here the distinction between the two and then as i said this photo section for as about the first guy basically and then section five is about the second guy
so on page forty four and your xerox copy talks about the to fact
now you're going to find a lot of shift and vocabulary you can find half a dozen different synonyms different terms for each of these two kinds of contemplation so yeah you need to feel at home and moving around in this terminology so you have a fairly sure idea of what you're talking about and that and beneath
this surplus of termed you're really talking about two things which are fairly clear secondly as but especially the second one is clear that is the pure cotton contemplation even if you can find like an carnival tradition traditional find a number of different phases of that pure contemplation here basically somehow all the same thing
strictly speaking contemplation is an immediate and in some sense passive intuition of the inmost reality of our spiritual self and god present within us but there's also an active and medium on contemplation and which this perception is attained in some measure by own gift now noticed that
two things of nginx two divisions to distinctions of being made at the same time what does between passive and active the other is between immediate immediate that as not the same place as two are connected
the passive contemplation or later because infused contemplation a for contemplation are strictly supernatural connotation you could call it united pure of experiments
is something which is as it were an experience of god in god and ruka it's you remember that saying of echoed for instance at t the i with which you see god as the eye with which god sees himself something like that
in other words echoed his a special on this that the only way that you really know god is in god's knowledge of go
and you can think of that as in the word if you wish but at this point we should get beyond any dualistic vocabulary merely and just talk about one thing it's like the the sound of one hand clapping and tradition
so this is something which is is number were echoed says the one who's who is just say you've gotta be so poor you cannot even have a place for god because he brings his on place with them when it comes
okay
if you're still you're still you're poor of poverty but you still have a place for god to dwell you're not poor enough you don't have a place for not going to nothing and goblins is on place with him that's typical and vocabulary and quite probably several different expressions are allowed to them
but you get the i do now that's what this mystical contemplation is is pure contemplation it's immediate the only medium is god
and it pass it because we simply can't do it we can't make a place for this you see can't polish the mirror until until you see listen because there is nothing there
ah so you really move across that threshold shoulder to non-duality were all the words become observe these paradoxes
we're very familiar with this from the east damage the other kind is active and mediated at the same time now
active means you can do something about it in some way you can show is a induce it or learn it or is a progression to other words this is something you can grow in
and also it can be something creative we need to say something about it
usually they don't say anything about that usually they just talk about it in terms of aesthetical activity and that's a contemplative activity of meditation and so on okay that is a inducing and show to promoting and favouring and growing this kind of contemplation but there's also a creative element which
is very important and and begins to get into that she was very important for him
okay

many gives a good deal of attention to what is this active contemplation and these pages are very good pages forty five and forty six that very much worth reading intensely
because it brings it right into your own experience and not just into your directly what would will go directly prayer experience but into a broader area of experience of life see what i mean voltage
he started talking about active contemplation the upon the top of forty five
tonight ninety and the parisian a patient
he talks about the will of god and then need symbolic ritual enactment of this sacred mysteries and then he talks about the attitude or would you go to the politics of the contemplative mine
that it's not easily swept away by apparent change either in other words it's it's not attached either to the static or to the smell of movement is not attached either to the unchanging or to the changing
but somehow is able will freely to move between the two
mertens an interesting example himself thing is
we could talk more about that the factors that the to find a real conservatism you have to get beyond conservatism and find out what's really at the origin you really have to go back to the beginning and find out what that is and then sort to push aside that conservatism it goes back to the nineteenth century the eighty
yeah century the thirteenth century and the seventh century you've gotta go back to the real beginning
and that then you find your in a radical position if you get back to the new testament if you're conservative and have really to get back inside the new testament you become a radical
martin himself of course
add to i will say move back and forth minutes and between a more withdrawn pole and between supporting encouraging and he couldn't actively engaged in a lot of movements but certainly certainly was a lighting fires underneath them in the sixties
so we gotta look at his life his performance as response to history as well as what he says interior
okay down at the bottom of forty five inactive active contemplation a person becomes able to live within himself he's managed to be at home with his untouched now this should have an intense residence in your own life this kind of thing okay this is what we're about now it's been a great what we've got a disservice for the earth
earlier tradition to forget all about this were pretended all of your energy had to be put into the and to prayer directly or something like that or is if you were trying to abstract yourself out of here practical like although there are other were other ways of talking about this but merton is very good because he's had to recover this bit by bit
he becomes to a greater and greater degree independent of exteriors support doesn't mean he rejects everything external his mind as pacified not by passive dependence on things outside himself but by its own constructive activity okay now that's the core of it and i think in mertens on life as well
does to say he derives and satisfaction of of spiritual creativeness notice how another word creativity creativeness has crept in here
and notice how to things are coming together you want is the spontaneity of something that lights up inside you as you experience something okay and the other's creativity and the to and almost have to say exchange about at this point in other words the experience within yourself and the creativity are
inseparable in some way
it's almost like in the experience is virtual potential hidden the creativity
something like that
in any case the to are happening at the same time
instead of only and this has talked about his immediate kind of contemplation as medium mediated it's mediated by things are mediated by understanding and mediated by symbols and by by nature and buy books and all kinds of things and by the scriptures themselves
but the same time is mediated and it's immediate because it's not mediated by what somebody else thinks anymore okay
so it's mediated in a sense but it's also direct and immediate
mediated in a sense that it's coming through particular understandings concept symbols images ideas emotions feelings all kinds of things it be the liturgy or which are reading and reading of scripture hatched on its immediate and the sense that this is happening in you instead of you're listening to somebody or
telling her about it and then taking it on faith which is a very good thing to do but it's only the preparation which really supposed to happen as it turns out inside yourself okay
as her important
and is very important in a catholic church particularly because we've got this thing about everything comes from attack now so many people are expecting father to give them everything we expect the scriptures to be interpreted for you picked authority to tell you this you tell you that and and that's good it's good to be ready and sub
passive and obedient and open and that sense and committee and on facebook on the other hand it's gotta happen inside you it's gotta be your own ball games and our later it's gonna be your life it can't pay it second hand
and so much of the catholic ground has been sterilized by that over vertical structure in which everything has to come from authority everything has to come from the priest

he derives in our satisfaction from spiritual creative and i'm thinking his own thoughts reaching his own conclusions looking at his own life and directing and and accordance with his own and a true and that's the hardest thing i suppose
discovered in meditation and under the eyes of god
derive strength not from what it gets out of things in life
out of things in people but from giving himself to life and others that's something else okay now he's turned to from a receiving to are giving that's another little movement that he snuck in there
he discovers the secret of life and a creative energy of love
now it's interesting that you bring those two things together it would be very interesting do you do an exit jesus's paragraph and you could you could write a book and almost how he goes from experienced to creativity and and creativity to love because if you take creativity down to a chance theological corey and i could see it
creativity can be a little bit like spring flowers it can be like producing nice things you know or enjoying one of the movement of one's own psyche and being delighted with ones on a new ones on tavern and so on gifted us
but what's what's it got to do really with christianity with the core of the theological quarter of christianity with the new testament when you're i can get right hand turn christianity is a new creation but how does a new creation happens it happens through phases and reverbed as enough and love is what creativity
seems to become when you take it down to its room when you take it down to its christian room so it's a kind of love which creates that which it loves with creates its object if you put it in it into personal sense and there's the kind of love which doesn't ask anything but
the rings being it doesn't worship of something else or somebody else worship being out there sunlight but somehow it confers confers being made he believes being beneath the surface and brings a dental lab for kind of midwife operation i don't think the statement is complete because there's a matter of five
finding being there to and loving the being english there
so creativity and up not a sentimental or sensual indulgence but as a profound himself ablative expression of freedom
nourished by meditation and reading and by liturgy but before reading meditation and worship should turn into contemplation they must merge into a unified and intuitive vision of reality
we can be in a big hurry to arrive at contemplation i think and want to over the all of the rest of this but we'd better not because the rest of this is our humanity and incentives the humanity that has to be built christ before the
deeper higher or more complete kind of contemplation can be achieved a released before we can stay there before we weekend before it can be it a very persistent element in our lives
a unified and intuitive vision of reality
maybe is asking too much i don't know if everybody's going to arrive at it but it certainly is something to work on and especially for a monastic people and especially if they want to help anybody else can
remember he started with the issue of the unification of the human person i did to beginning of this whole thing and our experience that's what it's about that's connected with contemplation contemplation is sort of one side of it so now he's coming back to that in terms of a vision and terms of would you call it a theology may be much simpler than a theology
a unified an intuitive vision of reality
thinking if you think about
contemporary people
i think of martin himself as having a kind of vision i think also a big griffiths very much of having that kind of vision especially representing this active kind of contemplation and he's talking about okay which would have been spoken of earlier and christianity as gnosis gno sas louis boy he writes about data laugh
it's a knowledge somehow of the divine as passing through other things as transfiguring other and okay as as president other things festival in people that you can see that but also in nature and what you read know country but the world as transfigured and as moving
divine light and fire
i was reading once again something in begriff it's a new vision of reality as totally that kind of thank know that that's the vision that characterizes him is that vision of things of the universe as in this divine light and not only statically and a divine light and some of the tradition the early patrol
istick tradition at tended to be static and i'm seeing a logo of things but actually as being transformed and this divine fire and some as a new creation coming into being as history is more accelerated our time i think it's easier to see that
whereas i think an early christianity people were more inclined to say what's happened in a notch it's or until i hear nothing nothing remained for the second coming of christ
reading becomes contemplative when instead of reasoning we abandoned the sequence of the author's thoughts in order not only to follow were wrong thoughts but simply to rise above sword and penetrate into the mystery of truth which has experienced intuitive is present an actual so that's the moment from lex year
oh to a touch here to contact watch v okay leaving out our rachio which is some mouse because it's a bit of a side track here because he's on the track over a thought

the contemplative intuition of reality or perception of value so it's not the same as a purely aesthetic or purely scientific
when you say intuition although i have to be careful especially with the aesthetic of the aesthetic cringe into into a contemplation of value as well
any questions or issues about that before it passed on as a very important section and
he talks about a non-religious and aesthetic kind of patient later on but the dividing line here is very very fluid and vegas next so you have to be very careful about and excluding something as merely aesthetic
it all depends on the on the listener if you're talking about music or music is sacred practically speaking mileage and a make an exception of certain catchment
all music a sacred as it's all about artistic and or poetry and this worship and such
except where the element of perversity becomes absolutely toxic
it is that in keeping with
grabbing the early that
i as be brought to completion we're moving to a tap water for tea or passed from congress not trusted that we see it all happening now in our ninety and off and in co-creation attracts dutchman
and so as to work itself through our bodies into our psyche and show everything a whole ground as being is being changed and not just this sort of central nucleus so much of western tradition has been over focused and i think you're especially the combine tradition the over focus on pure contemplation as if your hurry to get past everything else can get right
yeah but but people can turn into zombies that way
because what and up with is an abstraction there's no such thing as as becoming a contemplative without becoming a human being without a whole here humanity somehow being transformed gradually
they've been so much of that so we started out in the modern age basically with the carmelite theology carmelite spirituality which is wonderful because nothing ever went higher but at the same time nothing was ever narrower
anselm stoltz the benedict and has his book or not
looking at it leaving and as connection at the doctrine or spiritual perfection a whole thing as a crusade against the purely psychological vision of messengers to book about mysticism but he's trying to
to make it theological lynching it the word theological sounds to academic but what he's trying to do it
is make it feel the whole thing relevant just pissed this is narrow
narrow also thinking and just a few thing a few people has called to the mystical life or earth real sort of like outside
there's a certain a certain truth have a voice dangers so you can almost say a real test for growth contemplation is looking at all
your own into your own incarnation and the have nothing wrong and then bringing that colourful to to
they can have a very worried at me natural doesn't exclude the reference incorporating why not try
there really to orientations you can have their because i think that the gift or contemplation as gratuities anyway we're talking about the higher kind of place john it just happens and and then it may happen in the person a very neurotic and sauna it doesn't immediately change it but you can take to orientations from their head from that point you can either specialize in the gun implosion
specializing in the experience and try at all costs to follow the road of that nomination of that contemplation just ignore everything else and that's a dangerous one because then the kind of question becomes an alternative to life and an alternative to humanity kind of better track can kind of super highway or you can say
this is given to me to transform my life to help me out of my imperfection and so on so somehow i've got it needed into the into the dough it's gotta work itself into the hole in this phone and actually helped way
which tends to happen anyhow i mean life tends to demand
there are certain situations in which you can get protected from that i can some contemplative communities and then you can really in a jam
because you will get more and more tightened to get more and more contracted trying to force yourself up into this this a tower of pure contemplation and get sicker and sicker and ascension
the this acer attack against that co-workers now he seems determines the old daughter abandoned oh martin does very much either of those with me young cedar stick it in a couple of sentences their body makes it the whole these events are they
you have to be up yourself sure and and enter into god's got and so if you really did it it's like asking any will be given to you but it's courageous but once we put a twist on her and so it's only actually do them for the pure reason seeking god than in
and a person has to be open to their environment i think open to what's around okay because if they try to figure it out and i go with their heads towards your goals are bound and clothes themselves to what's around them they're bound to get knotted up somehow i think know i think martin is very sound and how you martin as a healthy attitude so and he also
it is
fighting a purely what would you call it the the narrow and abstract notion of contemplation by giving such a rich treatment to this other than active contemplation are mediated contemplation you know
but here he doesn't have to fight the battle it's told she had to fight pack and what the forties thirties of forties he starts out by saying and network issues of you
enter into the area of mystical theology know you find it a battlefield and exactly what and so he's he's got to shoot all the way through against the southern thing so the book gets boring there is because it keeps firing away and he called psychological contemplation you
okay then he has a section on the liturgy here which is fairly self explanatory i think
and then
returns to union with god and activity
this is another all of these yes we are different angles on this active contemplation
now here he's talking about a category of people very large largely and here you you smell a little bit as the aroma of his earlier books
the great majority of christians will never become pure contemplative on necrosis truth
there's a little bit of the elitist thing here that can't help but come through
as if people outside the monastery or
naturally
what kind of a handicap
he talks about him hidden can't amplitudes and masked contemplation
now this is how would you call it a difficult area to go over because he's saying they they don't know that their contemplative and at the same time they know that their contemplative okay into a hidden kind of revelation but it's not that there isn't any awareness at all so it's it's tricky territory
here we speak of an awareness that is present but utterly unself conscious
well that's it is a kind of negative awareness and unknowing does if one were continually pushing the awareness behind his back or something like that are avoiding project avoiding making an issue of the awareness or avoiding trying to increase or make a business of some kind out of
you do find something i get on a desert fathers and encourage and to a lot of the tradition in this age
one kind of blade so to speak by forgetting that one is able to contemplate it sounds like a kind of mind game but derisory

the life of contemplation and action and purity of heart is in a life of great simplicity and inner liberty now the typical example of this of course on a cistercian monastery and the trappist monastery would have been the a life of the of the lay brothers that conversing in a trappist monastery who had a day
front office
then the latin choir office and who spent all day working all day and manual labor and often probably became a deeper contemplative than the choir religious who were priests and often about an intellectual of things you know clerical things on
but he doesn't bring the temple out human i think he has another places
then on page fifty two he talked briefly about the the battle the about acquired and infused contemplation happily he passes over it and without getting too involved in it
the the whole issue of what was supernatural and what was infused and what was mystical and any other issue of what was christian and what can non-christians experience became i don't just deadly and whole territory
really starts his book
ha
i don't know if this really helpful i'm jumping
reading started about have two or three slow
the structures lol
contemplative
the mystic
one and the warfare it not with i had a boundary line between the and so stoked is defending a christian baptismal get a contemplation or called to contemplate which is universal christians against an elitist
are people the vocation of being a sticks and are special kind of christians and therefore they have a special kind of contemplated distinguished by the special states as he calls them psychological states of and those are this stage of course that you find the common condition and which were
how to be criteria them on musical prodigy so that you forget that it's in your baptism that is there at the beginning and that everybody's okay
so this is that we here to enormous nature of in his tower of the special christian vocation special music stage them and i'm so so you can find finding missing us that at the same time we can having a christian vocation and christian contemplative experience it wants to be universal
a contemplative experience because he says this is something that's new invisibly your baptism and you may not experienced emotional psychological states and he says but it's something different from a non-christian has kind
so who's been planning this
yeah because of
and nasty universal
the various beloved and i see that is a of your stores his position for good an elected iranian was very launch my main a father's beckham setting aside a little bit scholastic and the product back in into
our education a chance gone
and then you have a universal is merton okay well when he begins to talk about kind of life gives you an example of resemble
i'm a chinese general
so
at this point we can make them which we can see the three and we realize that that you should be has its own kind and that are several validation and i was here but we also share is that a trinity really gonna risk our website and if the hierarchical mile well it tends to be another which everybody was involved
these battles makes a hierarchy as something as denmark cannot share in mystic contemplation well that will be hearing a the theory of starts with the monk cannot share in this the real genuine supernatural mystical push
i'll get recommendation recommendations again
and the crime i would say don't even think about it because christians are not be over experience

looking around that the probably be really wants to pursue the path contemplation well the end up in the striving for domestic lot going on the don't negate the then one could write yes sure
oh yeah i mean you develop time you sure this is a matter of interpretation okay a matter of making nice needs a political defense wines and then falling over okay and if i wanted to draw it away what what we say way it really is i don't know if we could but would have to be a different picture okay
yeah and i think there are there are mistakes and and the indian tradition who has simply experience it kind of complete union i didn't know where you're having but their way is not our work but we can't put ourselves on a higher level mayor we don't understand that
there are other things we've done just don't know yet
or adapt quickly became higher mom's measurement we just that's right i'm not sure
and now this is the way to this is the battlefield picture and it's not to it doesn't attempt to be a picture of the way things really are in fact it's a caricature at the top now there's that tower there is especially
yeah not real
because what you do i think what happened in the mystical experiences you sink deeper into the common thing okay it's not a verdict is not arising think it is that a centering it's a descent into the center of the total body so that your more were more one with all of it and all of them anybody else
should you get lost into the center of this thing was happening what are the know how they will be discovering vedic and are two children that this whole idea the ground beings of that which permeates that's right now i want to return them as the movement out and move money
under in st me nuts right now
ah
and then martin talks about natural contemplation and mystical theology was just taking a different terminology now
talking about the same to grades or levels for categories and bringing back the ancient language which i see first and of acquiesce actually
a natural contemplation or theory of fizzy k k you see that expression on top of fifty three
and theology theology theology for a vacuous is the pure full experience of god unit of experience very different from what it means in our and our time of course
and he wants now to appropriate those that tradition most to terms that structure for what he's saying and place what he's saying on top of it which is pretty legitimate i think he says age reviving this classification
yeah
the text from a bag or is it's perfect coast number one is another bamberger transformation and practical some catches and hurt
it's on page fifteen and had right at the beginning of the practical
this is the core of christianity is the dogma of christ our savior have to take dog manner brooch is composed of three levels now practice gate that practice that's the active like aesthetic hello secondly of the contemplation of the physical world that's theory of physical or apartments active
contemplation
and thirdly of the contemplation of good at his theology or pure contemplation or periodic experience or mystical theology all of those terms so three level
it's interesting that the practically is talked about as a knowledge to there the active not life as a kind of wisdom is a level of knowledge even though we think of it as are doing

okay i've got a lot much that but i think would probably just have to skip and a pass on
a
there are some valid critiques of all of these levels of course because the christian history doesn't like latter's the gospel doesn't like iraqis gospel doesn't bike
in our product a product v inside because it's a it's an explosion of unity of the inner tube and into question of how far you get it of how well you grasp or allow yourself to be grasped by that unity and explosion christ is not a question of becoming a better guide to on being are high
i are kind of and individual or even a deeper person or something like that so there's a kind of what would you call it self destructive thing in the growth in the as cent and that the more one essential on decent and of course natural same as the wisdom st benedict has in his role where the the ladder of humility says you go
up by descending so the ladder chelsea also very clumsy but with a very deep wisdom in the center of
how does a great article by rauner and the third volume of geological investigations called reflections on a gradual ascent to perfection and christianity the very powerful article we talked about all the different grades and ladders and scale schemes that may have more or less to set them as
side and says what is it that we can call progress in christian life and then a determined two sides to it he says one side has always been ignored and that's side of what happens to you
and it was not what's going on inside of you but what is it that confronts you that you have to respond to because of the historical eschatological elena
what existential against the gears as i wouldn't the other one because the existential deepening of act okay he says the way that you're really grow is by being able to respond to act or to live from a deeper and deeper center in here so now this is parallel to what
we've been saying from martin okay
that real progress is the existential deepening cone act i respond to this situation from a deeper center and therefore with more of myself
then i was able to respond to the last situation okay have a situations which you might line up would be the situations and typically happen to people in like the challenges are success and failure and of loss and of death those things
the existential deepening of act and he says what keeps us from doing this is what he called a con que percents here the old word computer sense but is is mean a for conclusions as much deeper and broader than what we usually mean by that because usually when mean what push a desire mean desire want
but what he needs my computer percenters the whole inertia of your being everything that holds you down or keeps you from being one and from being free from from responding from the center of your okay as you can keep essential for him
so that's what all this bag and the indication of our processing of our progress most the the deeper response
as really it's really good
and so that the scales become pretty irrelevant unless where you are but a say on a mystical scale is an expression of where you are on this scale of get a response which also can be a pretty mysterious because he'll talk about diego
the most superior lie adjustment as being most hidden much
and then there's the the great suzuki of course part d t suzuki or california suzuki says the goal of practice is always to keep our beginner's mind our original mind concludes everything within itself
it has always rich and sufficient within it so you should not lose your self sufficient state of mine this does not mean a closed mind but actually an empty mine and a reading on if your mind is empty it has always ready for anything and is open to everything and a beginner's mind there are many possibilities and the expert expert mine thereof
you
now i'm shooting a lot of that i knew in a hurry which is not quite fair but
i'd encourage you to take the whole thing about great and stages with a good a good deal of salt
i'd read it in the light of the gospel absolutely
notice how the gospel flat jatiya the other iraqis of the old testament the religious structures of israel and sean and notice the a powerful and the pharisee and the public
and yet at the same time and i we wouldn't be in a monastic like unless we believe there was some place to go and we believe there was a journey and destination and that the worst ages and average progress that there is growth
so it's it's a mysterious thing that that's a battle enough conclusion
any questions before we quit